Burning Man
by HappierThanMost
Summary: Locked down in a treatment facility, Soda's mental issues get the best of him.


_This is a deeper and very dark look into a mentioned incident from The Trip, when Soda had a breakdown in the treatment facility. But mostly, this is my attempt at third person. I only feel comfortable writing in first, but I figure Fan Fiction is meant for practice and experimentation and growth. So bear with me! I'm also breaking out of my usual present tense to practice past, and within the story, I'll shift from past to present to indicate the flashback. _

_**WARNING: This story contains graphic violence and offensive comments, both racist and derogatory.**_

**BURNING MAN**

There's a sense of strength that can be found inside great madness, and that man carried the power of a hundred or more that night. It took three male staffers, not a one of them scrawny, just to drag him to his bed, two more to tie that wild boy down. Sodapop Curtis had a demented mind that always tried to trick him, but this time he walked its crooked path, bare foot and willing, until he found himself good and lost.

Nobody thought a thing about him not showing up for mealtime. Not a cause for alarm when he was present for round-ups, after all. He stood tall and patient outside his box of a room, his hands clasped easy behind his back, waiting for the night nurse to deliver the medication, then search his mouth that he'd already opened good and wide, so she could be sure not a single capsule had been left. This was by now routine, and Soda stared expressionless when her gloved finger hooked his lip roughly, and he tasted the latex where she wandered by force. At her wordless prompting, his tongue slithered obediently down his chin to reveal only saliva and the white residue of warm milk, meant to soothe his troubled stomach and wash the medicine down his throat.

He'd later turn down the rowdy game of cards during free time, and sit instead at the caged window of the rec room. But who is there to fault him? Sometimes a guy just needs a break, to think about things and look beyond the moon. Even a guy like Sodapop.

So when he asked Big Joe for a light that night, there wasn't a reason in the world for Joe not to strike his match he offered, holding out the teasing flame and to leave the soldier there to smoke alone, in his broken kind of peace.

"Lights out in thirty," and the card players groaned their complaints to the tough but good natured orderly. Big Joe was a pal as well as their guard. He'd served in Korea some years ago, and for that he easily held their respect, these broke-down psych ward warriors; that and he was quick to manhandle and inject anybody that dared step out of line. Tonight was proving to be a calm one though, so Joe sat down at his station with a cup of coffee and the newest Ebony issue, and let his muscles off the hook.

At any given time, Soda could often be found at the epicenter of any and all action, but at that moment, he was hearing none of the good natured ruckus his fellow patients made. In fact, he was nowhere inside the locked and sterile facility. Soda'd already found a burned out star to swing on, and had made that thousands mile trip across the ocean.

To anyone else there, he looked the image of a relaxed man, smoking in his chair and pensive, studying his feet he'd perched on the sill. The institutional assigned socks and slippers lay discarded in a corner, where he'd tossed them earlier in annoyance. So that his bare toes could then flex and curl on the cool black marble of the ledge, all ten aligned and accounted for, and as he stared at them he remembered too much...

* * *

He peels off his damp socks and tries to dry out his feet before the jungle rot sets in. Ten toes, ghostly pale against the rest of his tanned skin, flex and curl to warm in the fiery fields of the clearing.

His grown-out hair lifts and gets blown by the whirling blades that slice the air, their rhythmic pounding driving him near mad as the choppers hover above his camp, never landing. Like gargantuan metal birds just emerged from some prehistoric life, they move on for better bones to scavenge.

xXx

"Curtis, what day is it again?"

Soda squints and scrunches his nose when he looks up at the sun, the same one who sits over a little white house he used to live in. "Nineteen." They know he's the one who'll always keep track of the number, dutifully noting each stabbing sunrise.

And the five men eat their rations and wonder if the Sergeant ever plans to end this longest patrol.

xXx

Harper's adrenaline shoots through his question, "Did ya get him?"

Nothing on Earth could loosen his grip. "Got'em," and Soda clenches his teeth tight and knots the rope even tighter, securing their prized prisoner to the gnarling branches of an ancient fig tree.

xXx

The man refuses to talk between punches and pistol whips. He spits instead at his captors, until his only sound's the gurgling against blood that pools thick in his mouth and throat. Soda's taking a needed break, and he sucks on his joint out where the moon lights up the underbrush. He gently kicks the patch of mushrooms that thought they had as good of a chance as any to survive here in this soil, but instead their spongey caps break apart against the rough sole of an American boot. And Soda's lungs fill with the smoke of escape, all while the violence goes on a few steps away, the violence that's been ordered, that has to be.

xXx

"Is he dead?" Greer's supposed to be the medic but asks anyway.

"Naw. You just playin' possum, ain't ya?" A tired slap against skin echoes above the barbed tree tops.

"I don't know much, but he looks pretty dead to me."

"Me too, I don't see him breathing or nothin." Jersey's mobster accent can't mask his inexperience or his nausea.

Soda knows the prisoner's no good to them now if he's dead, and his anger at his crew lights the pyre inside him; anger for fucking up a chance at information, a chance to get back to base quicker, to get back to sleeping a few nights on a cot instead of the ground and if he's lucky, some much needed letters from home. Or maybe even a rewarded weekend away, where he can let himself go among those seedy taboos of a raunchy Saigon night. But all his hopes have dissolved with the POW's last breath and how can that motherfucker be dead, he can't be dead, can he? Soda's rage and blame now pivot from his men and take aim at the body that slumps lifeless, held up only by the rough and unforgiving web that Soda trapped him in.

Nunez finally thinks to check his floppy scarecrow wrist. "Still got a pulse, barely but he's got one."

Reed sounds bored. "On a scale of one to ten, whaddya give it?"

"Umm I'll give it a three, Dick. It's got a good beat, kinda slow but I like it. It's real groovy to dance to," and they all laugh at Nunez for mocking the nerds on American Bandstand.

"All that Gook needs is just a little shock. Here, pour some water on him."

"And waste it? God Nolan you _are_ retarded ain'tcha?" Reed cuffs the back of his best bud's sunpeeled neck and a grin reveals his sarcasm and a chipped front tooth. "Real nice of Uncle Sam acceptin' your kind in his Army though."

"Here, gimme a light," but Soda remembers the silver zippo already in his pocket that he'd borrowed earlier, the one with _Why Me God _on one side and _Fuck Communism_ engraved on the other. Only Harper notices Soda drawing hard off the cigarette, causing his cheeks to hollow and the embers to glow red. And watches while Soda crawls to the strung up man and snags the weed from his mouth. Calmly and without hesitation, he uses the burning tip to singe the enemy skin.

The rest of the Tigers grow quiet once they're drawn to witness Soda's tactic, and he's careful not to extinguish. Between his thumb and forefinger he lightly rolls it around and angles the smoking ash sideways, so it catches on fragile tissue, leaving behind a pattern of charred markings. And he's reminded of the long ago boy who loved connect-the-dots and the pictures that magically appeared after all the lines had been penciled.

But the hanging man is unresponsive. He doesn't cry out as Soda had hoped. He doesn't beg for mercy and spill his secrets and worst of all, he doesn't show any signs of life. Defeated, Soda Curtis stubs his cigarette out firmly, twisting and grinding it down into the disappointing flesh that's already starting to grow cold and so soon will stiffen.

* * *

A lights-out curfew had the patients retiring to their rooms, dwindling one by one, leaving only Soda for Big Joe to deal with. It wasn't like Curtis to cause him any problems, and Joe shook his head and mumbled a few curses on the walk to fetch the lonely soldier, where he still sat at the barred window, quiet, his head down.

Soda Curtis watched while his cigarette seared into his own skin again, harder this time, branding his wrist with the same marks he'd given his dying enemy, and the only sign of pain was the watering of his eyes that leaked down over his high cheekbones. He couldn't hear Big Joe calling for backup on his walkie-talkie, once he'd realized what that crazy boy was up to. And by the time Joe grabbed his arm and jerked him out of the chair, Soda was lost somewhere between hell and insanity. He fought with a strength of the monster he'd always known to live inside him, managing to knock the hypodermic needle out of Joe's grasp, and instead of puncturing his neck, the dirty needle rolled along the cold tile floor, right beside Soda's crushed cigarette. And alone, Joe was unable to wrestle a panicked Soda into any kind of hold.

"Settle down Private Curtis, nobody here's gonna hurt you," and the night staff had finally surrounded him, ready to drag Soda back to his bed, to his restraints.

He called out for his father then, eyes shut tight and face pained by his convulsions. In the pinprick of his mind's light was the vision of his mother's hands, but they looked as ancient and gnarled as a certain tree that he remembered. And on the tree he saw a man, strung up like the autumn's scarecrow, and his screams of _Pony_ tore at his lungs when he realized who hung there instead, bleeding out and skinny.

The doctors who wrangled him paid no attention to his nonsense, not even to the sorries he cried over and over as they worked to anchor him to the bed frame. His apologies weren't meant for them anyway.

He thrashed with his limbs that were free, and once all were restricted, he writhed and wriggled his core like a snake until the syringe sunk deep, shooting the tranquilizer across the thousand mile journey of veins. And as his movement began to settle, his heart lined up to the monitor's beeping, synching with its steady beat. Big Joe could once again take a solid breath, and he squeezed his patient's hand now that he was finally being saved from his haunted and miserable delusions. He knew a thing or two about that himself, and he was relieved when Dr. Fran, the friendly on-call doctor pulled off her stethoscope and said "He's resting now."

Soda felt himself turn to liquid and sink into the thin mattress, and gravity would've pulled him further into the Earth had he not been trapped in the unforgiving web that held him up. Right before the world went dark, a ghost's smile eerily raced across his lips when he found that he was now the hanging man, the burning man, and he'd rightfully taken his place. With the very last thread of his muscle control, he spit against his captors, then faded into a Vietnam sleep.

**A/N: **Outsiders by SE Hinton. The zippo lighter messages were real examples I found on google of engraved lighters the US soldiers used in Vietnam.

_Thank you for reading this dark and twisted tale. Actually, I apologize! :)_


End file.
